How it works: 3D Printing

In a nutshell, a physical object is created from a virtual design, i.e. the digital design is converted into a physical three-dimensional object by adding material layer by layer until the object is formed.

The digital designs can be created from scratch by using 3D modelling software like Autodesk, a 3D scanner, a digital camera and photogrammetry software.

There are different techniques and different types of 3D printers. The materials also vary – for example, plastic, rubber, metals, alloys, etc. – but the basic approach remains the same.

1. The first step is to make a virtual design of the object in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) file using a 3D modelling program (for a new object) or 3D scanner (copying an existing object).

2. In the 3D modelling software, the output model is spliced into many thousands of horizontal layers (2D image).

3. The file is uploaded to the 3D printer where the 2D image is read and the object is created by blending the layers together to create a 3D object.

4. The 3D object is made by melting plastic and depositing it onto the printer platform, as specified by the design, where it instantly cools.

More in depth we will explore the topic related to smart manufacturing in the upcoming issue of our .experience magazine.

News from ERNI

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The management consultancy McKinsey not only dedicated a study to this topic in 2018, but also developed the McKinsey Design Index (MDI) from it. This should quantify the business value of an appealing design.

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I remember one time I was working with a mobile project and it was already deployed to the client. It work out well from planning, development, testing to deployment but after a while the client was clamoring that the app is getting slower and slower when it was continuously being used up to the point where it will just crash suddenly. Well it is a given fact maybe not all but I’m guilty of it that we really love our code, so in that sense I was pointing the blame on maybe the device or something unusual that the client was doing with the Application. To make the long story short I’ve learned that Profilers are programmer’s best friend.

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The research company “App Annie” has revealed that worldwide app downloads have increased by 60 percent between 2015 and 2017 to a total of more than 175 billion annually – statistically this means almost two downloaded apps per inhabitant per month. No wonder, since the number of apps available on Google Play and the iOS App Store has now grown to more than six million.

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Since 2010, Hans Hess has been President of Swissmem, Switzerland’s largest industrial association, and Vice-President of economiesuisse, the Swiss Business Federation. For our .experience magazine, he contributed with his guest article on industry 4.0.

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Apple founder Steve Jobs once said: “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.” Jobs was known for placing a high value on the design of his products. But he wasn’t the first.

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PEDCO and ERNI will work together in fostering the growing numbers of Applied SAFe® customers; where PEDCO delivers its own product Applied SAFe® and ERNI with its 25 years of experience in Swiss Software Engineering delivers consulting, technology, delivery, and agile coaching in order to bring the Scaled Agile Framework to live at Applied SAFe® customers.

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As a more than 4-year-long SAFe® practitioner and trainer, I see that SAFe offers a lot of chances for our customers. Generally, in the long run, enterprises want and need to change the way they are working, but often do not know where to start.

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Nearshoring as a way to focus on the core business and let a nearby location take care of your software development is around for some decade. However, the competition among nearshore locations in Europe has intensified and it is not an easy decision to pick the right one for your needs.

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Last month our ERNI team in the Philippines experienced a memorable event. We all got united for one purpose and that is to extend our generosity and love. This year, instead of having the usual exchange gifts we came up with an idea to raise funds and give donations to our chosen charity. This program was called “Exchange your gifts to those in Need”.

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How do you get from a great idea which you believe could have a significant impact to a tangible product? In a recent community project at ERNI, we put ourselves to this task. This is the second article out of a series of four, in which we explain how we built the IoT sensor network. Have a look at article one. The topic was presented at the Google Developers DevFest Switzerland 2018 conference. Watch the talk online.

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Apps have become the most important channel for customer interaction for almost all industries and countless companies within just a few years. This is particularly true for so-called Mobile-First markets, where mobile devices are the No. 1 platform and many of their users have completely skipped the generation of desktop devices at the desk.

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After a successful Hack and Hike event in Switzerland, another one took place in Slovakia this weekend. Twenty employees joined this event in order to spend some free time with their co-workers, enjoy the fresh mountain air and organise a few hack sessions.

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Attending conferences is a door opener in every business area. In Madrid, The Swiss Business Hub Spain as representative of the Swiss trade and investment promotion agency Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE) and part of the Embassy of Switzerland in Spain organized the Swiss fintech conference and B2B event FINTECH SWITZERLAND.

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Since the beginning of 2018, starting with our market entry to the U.S., a group of three ERNI experts has been performing work for our medical technology customer in the States. What is it like to be working in the U.S.A. and how are our colleagues doing overseas? We talked to one of them – Nuria Lluch, our Barcelona Lab Manager about the experiences.

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At the end of every summer, the developers meet and spend a weekend together surrounded by nature. This activity, called Hack & Hike, brings an opportunity to escape from daily routine, clear the minds by hiking and come up with new ideas during the hack sessions.

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Previously, we already talked about the healthy lifestyle pages of our colleagues from ERNI Philippines and the engagement of our Slovak colleagues for the Capital city of Bratislava. Today, Stefan from ERNI Switzerland tells about his support of a non-governmental organisation in Madagascar.

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Andreas Gisler becomes CEO of the ERNI Group with immediate effect. He also remains Delegate of the Board of Directors of ERNI Global and thus responsible for the operational management of the company with the three divisions ERNI, SEI and People Business.

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“It’s easy to create and run a new cloud-native application, but migrating an existing Java Web application to the cloud might be quite complex: most applications have to be changed in a way that makes them incompatible with the old environment and thus additional risks arise. In this article, we’re sharing our experience with the migration of large Web applications, including some advice and best practices.”

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The previous two articles in this series introduced the Azure Machine Learning Workbench and walked us through the process of wrapping our ML model in a self-contained Docker image. Now is the time to take this image and deploy it into a production-grade environment.

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In change initiatives one key success factor is to create a shared view on what the future will look like. Visualising of the envisioned target state is a powerful method for guiding the change team on their way through the change.

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The first part of this series of articles introduced the Azure Machine Learning Workbench and showed us how to setup the resources required to operationalize our machine learning models
In this article, we will see how to get our model into Azure and run it locally for testing purposes. Let’s get to it!

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Machine learning and AI are everywhere. More and more people are discovering the advantages that learning algorithms can provide – decreasing costs, improving efficiency, eliminating menial tasks, etc. Knowing at least a little bit about how these algorithms work is quickly becoming a necessity. Read it now.

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Many of our customers’ data projects are subsets of larger Internet of Things initiatives. Although the IoT produces data, the scope of the IoT projects is usually more extensive and covers a broader pool of activities. This illustration describes/shows the ERNI collaboration model for IoT projects.

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A cyclist full of energy, a passionate painter, a handball player jumping in the air with a clear goal to score: Anyone who is currently looking at the external presentation of ERNI can see a clear move.

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We are all working together at ERNI, but not all of us can see each other daily. Some of us have the opportunity to work closer with other teams and know each other better – long distance is not a limiting factor anymore.

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Continuous Integration / Delivery is bread and butter of every agile development team nowadays. Visual Studio Team Services or Team Foundation Server is one of many tools providing this feature. Although I will use VSTS/TFS in this article same process can be used with any other CI/CD tool.

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Innovation can be hard to implement if there is no common understanding about it between the organisation’s stakeholders (colleagues, partners and leadership). For a project manager, stakeholder management is not only important but it can also often make or break the project.

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DevOps is an important facet of mobile app development that is now a requirement for a successful app life cycle. When building and delivering mobile apps nowadays, one has to consider setting up a lot of different things.

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An integral part of consultancy and software development in a VUCA world – meaning volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguine – is focusing on making feedback loops shorter and more efficient. The agile mindset is spreading within organisations – from agile software development to business or corporate. Here are the 5 major methodology trends we see for 2018.